Session 6 - New Sessions - Finishing Pre-Production And Creating A Shot List - 23/5/12

We started off the session by having a look at the finished script and everyone agreed that it is really good and that we are all happy with it.

Actors and locations:
We all discussed who's house that we could use for the mum and dad bathroom/kitchen scene and Djed is going to ask his mum and take some location shots to show us all in the next session. We have all agreed that rather than using teachers to play the mum and dad that it will be better and more accessible to bring actors in to play them instead.

What is a storyboard?
We looked at examples of different storyboards including a scene from Toy Story. This was to help us to understand why a storyboard is important and that it helps to give a visual idea of what we want our shots for our film to look like and what impression we want them to give.

Creating a shot list:
We read through the script, all reading out a part each and the scene directions and discussed one scene at a time and how we want it to look. We created a shot list out of our discussions and agreed on what shots we want to use.

Forms and paperwork:
For our campaign there is lots of paperwork involved so we had to fill some in to be able to make our campaign happen.

We discussed the following for the purpose of funding and support:

What is our campaign about?
- Speak out and stand up for what you believe in
- Consequences happen if you keep quiet and don't help a friend who is under pressure to  join a gang
- Our slogan is - It stops with us!

What are our plans for the future?
- A launch party
- Talk at an event/festival and show our film
- Brochures for funders for future films through our group and production company, Ambition Films
- Go to talk in school assemblies with a police officer (build a partnership with them) about the dangers of getting caught up with a gang and show our film
- A website for our production company and campaign and put our film on it
- Expand our brand
- Get Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter
- Hold a day event to promote our campaign to schools and run lots of activities

We finished up the session on a positive note and excited that we will soon be shooting our film and making our campaign come to life.

Session 5 - Feedback On The Script And Improvising Final Dialogue - 16/5/12

Icebreaker:
We started the session off with an icebreaker. The icebreaker that we took part in was 'which one's a lie?'. We all had to say one lie about ourselves and one fact. The other members of the group had to guess which one was true and which one was a lie.

Miss Richards, a teacher at Pimlico Academy has agreed to take on the role of the mum in our film. This is really good news as we really need an adult to play this role.

Discussing script changes:
We read through the script, each of us reading a role. Then we discussed what we wanted to change. We agreed that we wanted to keep the storyline and scenes the same and we wanted to change the dialogue to make it even street and slang than it already was.

We agreed that we want our film to be called 'It stops with us!' which is also our message.

Role-playing dialogue:
We split into two groups to role-play dialogue for the three scenes that we felt needed it. We acted out the roles and acted the way we usually would respond. The people who weren't acting filmed our progress. We made notes of the dialogue that we had role-played.

Feeding back:
Both groups role-played their dialogue to each other and everyone agreed that there was nothing that needed changing in our new dialogue. We filmed the role-plays.




We finished up the session by filling in feedback forms and were all really excited that our film progress is going really well.

Session 4 - Adjusting The Script, Allocating Roles and Improvisation - 9/5/12

Icebreaker
To kick things off we all did an ice-breaker. We had a few new faces so we decided to go around the circle and get everyone to say their name and favourite TV show.

Reading through the script
We all read a part in the script and discussed what we wanted to change about it and how we wanted to end our film.
- Add a fight scene
- See the knife - gang close in - then he's on the floor (closing shot) - followed by an interview
- POV (point of view) shot - everything goes blurry - blackout - you hear voices talking (this is our idea to end our film)

We discussed some dialogue that we wanted to change.

Line of production
We stood in our line of production to see how far we had got in our film process. We agreed that we were coming to the end of the script stage.

Ideas > script > writer > producer > camera person > sound person > director/assistant director
                                  ^
         This is the stage that we are at

Improvisation for dialogue
We did some improvisation for a few scenes so that we could pick out some natural dialogue for our film.


Roles and locations
We discussed roles that everyone wanted to do:
- Nadia - Supporting actor/co-director
- Nicholas - Main actor/camera
- Karl - Main actor/camera
- Malachi - Main actor/co-director
- Sedigi - Supporting actor
- Thomas - Co-director/art director

Locations that we will use are:
- Student's house
- School (Pimlico)
- Street
- Bathroom at student's house

We finished up the session with paperwork and agreeing on the things that we are going to need for our campaign.

Session 3 - Working With A Screen Writer To Write Our Script - 2/5/12

We started off the session with a name game. Everybody said their name and their favourite film. We all had really great taste in films.

Introducing a script writer:
We were introduced to Tom who is a screen and script writer. He told us a bit about what his job entaled and answered any questions that we had for him.

Where have you written plays for?
The Arcola Theatre

How much money do you get?
Not much for theatre but there is much more money in writing for television.

Introducing our story to Tom:
We broke down our storyline for Tom. It is the story of a boy and his friend, the boy is under peer pressure to join a gang and his friend wants to help so seeks advice from his parents. Will he or won't he? Our message is: it stops with us!

We discussed our feelings on gang culture:
- It's wrong
- Parents need to think twice before they let their kids out

What does a script look like?:
We looked at a script from a scene in Spiderman and read through it. This was to give us an idea of what everything meant and how it all worked.

We then watched the clip that the script was from and everyone agreed that it was really clever and that they had changed some of the dialogue. Scripts are to give everyone direction and act like a blue print. Sometimes improvising means that you get some brilliant dialogue.

A script describes what the scene will look like and sets it all up.



Improvising dialogue:
For the final part of the session we did some improvisation for our first scene. This was so that we could get some dialogue for our script.

Session 2 - Restart Sessions - Starting Work On The Script And Allocating Roles - 25/4/12

We started off the session by welcoming another two new members to the group.

Recap on the last session:
- Focus on two friends in different scenarios
- Came up with loads of ideas
- Watched videos of other campaigns

Stages of creating a film:
We discussed the different stages of creating a film.
- Pre-production (storyboards, ideas, scripting, allocating roles, actors, etc)
- Production (the pysical creation of the film)
- Post-production (the edit)

Proposal paperwork:
We discussed the proposal form which is needed for the funding for the project. This helped us to straighten out specific elements of our campaign.

How does a film set work?
We did a really fun activity to demonstrate how a film set works and who's who.

Each one of us represented each of the elements of creating a film and stood in a line to see what stage we were currently at :
Ideas > script > writer > producer > camera person > sound person > director/assistant director
               ^
This is the stage that we are at

Then we acted out different roles to see how a film set would work during filming:



Roles:
Everybody wants to be in the film as actors and Djed wants to be the director.

Discussing the script:

The story is about peer pressure, bullying and decisions that a young boy faces to join a gang.

It will be two seperate stories being told at the same time:
- Shot identically
- Split screen
- Message - It stops with us

The story is about a young boy (Max) who's friend (Billy) is being bullied and contemplating joining a gang. Max speaks to his mum/dad about the situation but will it be to late to help Billy?

- The gang wants Billy to be a runner of cash (£1000)

We worked on putting a rough script together as we have a script writer coming into our next session to help us write it properly.

Feedback:
We filled in feedback forms and the session came to an end.

Session 1 - Restart Sessions - Introduction To Campaigning And Ideas Generation - 18/4/12

We kicked off the session by watching three examples of other films/campaigns for the benefit of all of the new starters.We all discussed the audience, the message and our likes and dislikes for each video/campaign.

Choose a different ending:
Audience: 13-19 year olds

Message: Don't carry a knife as it has consequences
Likes and dislikes:
- It's like a deterance
- The song at the end didn't work as it didn't make sense
- The sexy girls are a contradiction
- It looked like an amateur film
- It would be better longer
- It's stereotypical - young people will always get stop and searched
- Liked the choices - they are like your conscience
- It makes you think
- They could have made it more realistic - not everyone knows everyone in their area or are part of a gang
- The part where his friend offers him the knife is unrealistic as it would never just happen that way

Teen talent takes over 10 Downing Street:
Audience: Government, teenagers, curriculum leaders of the area and anyone with space
Message:Young people need their own space to be creative
Likes and dislikes:
- The free running puts you off
- It changes youth stereotyping
- The message is clear - we need space
- It means something being filmed at 10 Downing Street
- Liked the setting and talent - they both make it fun and serious at the same time
- It gets people's attention
- There's lots of stuff out there similar to it for young people - so it's not memorable

Beat the bully:
Audience: Secondary school age
Message:Don't just struggle, help someone if they are getting bullied or report it
Likes and dislikes:
- It's a little unrealistic with the phone bit - the name of the bully came up when she text (you wouldn't have a bully's name stored in your phone)
- Liked the setting
- The fight was realistic - in schools there is always a swarm of people
- It's hard to feel sorry for the boy
- The teacher bit is unrealistic as nobody usually finds out
- It needs something extra to give the viewer more empathy - it needed a starting point
- We would set in more on social networking websites

Storyboards and shot list:
We discussed that we need to come up with the script before we do storyboarding, but this is something that we will have to do.

The shot list that we want to use for our film is:
- Wide shot
- Mid shot
- Close-up

Ideas:
We all came up with three ideas that we wanted to make our film about and fed them back to the rest of the group.



Scene ideas:
We worked on discussing some scene ideas:

We want to have two scenarios:
1. A gang culture scenario
2. An in school bullying scenario

- The storyline will focus on the friend of two boys.One of the boys is getting bullied and the other is contemplating joining a gang.

Comments:
Campaigning:
- You have to have something that you want to change.
- We are the next generation of olders so let's change this now

Bullying:
- Don't take things into your own hands
- Situations escalate from in school and carry on outside of school
- Somebody always takes it too far

Our Message:
It stops with us!

We finished up the session by starting the proposal form and filling in feedback forms.

Introductory Session - Restart Sessions - Bringing New People Into The Group - 11/4/12

This session we were all really happy to be back and on track with our film. There were some new people that came to sign up for our sessions to help make our campaign brilliant.

Filling everyone in on our previous progress:
Djed filled all of the new people in on what we had done so far on our film.

Role preference:
Karl and Michael are keen to be behind the camera and everyone else is happy to be either in front of or behind the camera.

Ideas:
We all came up with some suggestions as to how and where we can share our film:
- Posters around the school (on the big screens)
- Show it in assemblies
- We can put it on the school's online page - frog or ispace - the school's idevelopment space.

We all agreed that we are keen to take our film into other schools once it is finished.

Some fresh ideas that we we all discussed to make the film about are:
- Cyber bullying
- Bullying in school (too cliché)
- Estate/bullying outside schools - continues
- Gangs - going into unknown territories
- Stereotypes - immigration bullying
- The way people dress
- Homosexuality
- Obesity
- Anorexic - more the way people look

What is a campaign?
We all discussed other campaigns that we know and that a campaign's main purpose is to make a change.
- Amnesty - a peace campaign
- Make poverty history

Our Campaign:
We want to make a change by making a short film. We want our audience to be 12-16 year olds. We want young people to come to our campaign, think for a while or signpost them on.

How can we make our campaign appeal?
- Refer our film to other films to make it more relevant - i.e. the Daminola Taylor case.

Where do we want to see our campaign?
- Bus stops where young people wait
- School assemblies
- School lessons
- Facebook/YouTube
- Screens around school

Evaluation:
We filled in our feedback forms and look forward to next week's session where we can get started on our campaign.